On April 29, Unit 1 of the San’ao Nuclear Power Plant in Cangnan County, Wenzhou City, Zhejiang Province, successfully completed a trial operation of 168 hours, and is ready for commercial operation.
It is the first unit in the Yangtze River Delta region to adopt the Hualong One technology, China’s independently developed nuclear power generation technology.
With the addition of this one, China General Nuclear Power Corporation (CGN) now operates 30 units, with a total installed capacity of 34.248 million kilowatts.
The San’ao Nuclear Power Plant in Cangnan County, Wenzhou City, Zhejiang Province, is operated by China General Nuclear Power Corporation. [Photo/sasac.gov.cn]
The first phase of the San’ao Nuclear Power Plant was approved on September 2, 2020, and the construction of Unit 1 began on December 31 of the same year.
Currently, the parameters of Unit 1 are stable and under control. Based on the average utilization hours of nuclear power units in China in 2025, the unit is expected to generate more than 9 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity annually, meeting the yearly needs of over 1 million residents. It will supply clean power to the Yangtze River Delta region, thereby promoting the region’s green and low-carbon transition and digital economic growth.
The San’ao Nuclear Power Plant is China’s first nuclear power plant to introduce private capital for its construction, where Geely Technology Group holds a 2-percent stake in the first phase of the project. This is a landmark example of private capital participating in building major energy infrastructure in China.
CGN has also worked with about 2,000 private enterprises since the start of the construction. The diverse cooperation areas include equipment manufacturing, maintenance services, material supply and logistics support. This collaboration has enabled participating companies to share in the benefits of major national projects while also achieving multiple breakthroughs in core technology localization, intelligent engineering construction, and innovative investment and financing models.
To date, the construction team has collected 13,926 pieces of feedback about the first phase of the San’ao Nuclear Power Plant, completed more than 260 improvements and achieved the first application of 24 domestically developed core pieces of major equipment.
The Yangtze River Delta region, one of the national computing power hubs under the “East Data, West Computing” initiative, features a comprehensive industrial chain and has a huge demand for computing power. This has created an urgent and sustained need for stable, clean, and efficient baseload electricity.
The San’ao Nuclear Power Plant is designed to have six Hualong One nuclear power units, which will be constructed in three phases. The power plant, when completed with six units operating, is expected to generate more than 54 billion kWh annually, equivalent to nearly 80 percent of Wenzhou´s annual power consumption. It is projected to reduce more than 16.35 million metric tons of standard coal consumption and cut nearly 50 million tons of carbon dioxide emissions each year.
By providing abundant green baseload power, the project will provide support for the Yangtze River Delta computing power hub, regional smart economic growth and high-quality development, facilitating the implementation of strategic arrangements made in the outline of the 15th Five-Year Plan (2026-30) to promote coordinated development between green electricity and computing infrastructure.
(Executive editor: Zuo Shihan)
